An Irrational Practise
by toonsta
Summary: Bella lives through the hazards of allowing Renesmee to grow up. "Whoever said mothering was a rational practice?"


**AN: **I haven't written in this fandom in years, but I found this on a crunched bit of paper when moving and still kinda liked it, so I thought I'd type it out and post it. Please forgive any mistakes in terms of names, places, ages etc... my Twilight general knowledge is not what it once was! I'd love to know what you think... so drop a line when you're done reading!

**Summary:** Bella lives through the hazards of allowing Renesmee to grow up. "Whoever said mothering was a rational practice?"

**Disclaimer: **The plot and characters of Twilight belong to Stephanie Meyer etc.

**An Irrational Practice**

She may look 24, but the reality is that she has lived through only seven winters and summers. Her childish heart has known no heartache, her body has felt no pain, her eyes have seen no suffering and her ears heard no censure. She is a child, a very intelligent child but a child none the less, and a spoilt one at that. Her mother sees it one afternoon when they are due to visit Charlie. Nessie throws a fit because she is being prevented from hanging out with the pack down at the La Push beach. Jake of course takes her part and Edward appears ready to capitulate but she puts her foot down. Renesmee then sulks right the way through their afternoon with her Grandfather. That night Bella calls a Cullen family meeting when her daughter is asleep.

"We've coddled her for too long and it's dangerous." She begins in her best no nonsense tone. "People will expect her to be far more mature than she is and we won't be able to keep her on the property forever. She's started to talk about going to school…"

"We could go to Alaska," Rosalie suggests, "College isn't a bad idea and we'd all be with her."

"That's the problem," Bella grinds out, "we'd be taking care of her." Rosalie's delicate nostrils flare and an air of hostility sinks around her.

"Bella, she's seven… you can't send her off alone." Edward chides. She doesn't particularly like that use of 'you'.

"My darling," She says, wearing a warning smile, "She thinks she's a grown woman. She already sneaks off to La Push at every opportunity. What exactly do you think she and Jake will be doing in a year's time when she's had a crash course in sex ed from a college campus?" The room falls silent as she stares her husband down. She can tell he's resisting the urge to growl at the thought of his daughter and Jacob Black, well…

At last Esme's calm voice breaks the silence.

"What are you proposing Bella?"

"I think she needs to see more of the world… and have time to grow into her body somewhere slightly less sheltered." She says, looking into Esme's understanding eyes.

"You want to move?" Emmett asks, non-plussed.

"She wants to send Renesmee away." Alice says calmly. Her eyes are slightly glazed and Edward's are glued to her face, following the pictures racing through her mind. "She's always unclear but I think we send her to Denali first. Kate and Garrett get fuzzy when they get back from their honeymoon."

"How long?" Rosalie demands.

"As long as it takes." Bella snaps back.

"We could take her with us on our next trip to Congo." Emmett suggests in an effort to placate his glowering wife.

* * *

If Bella could cry she would as she bids her daughter farewell in the snowdrifts in front of the Denali homestead. Instead she squeezes her so tight that eventually Renesmee complains of being crushed and rolls her eyes. The car ride home is silent. Jake fumes in the backseat and even Alice's visions have been unable to put Edwards mind at rest… but Bella knows this is the right thing for her daughter.

They leave her in Denali for two months; during which time they rack up a fairly impressive phone bill and Jake manages to make himself a constant nuisance and to rebuild two trucks and a motorbike, which he announces will be Nessie's, much to Edwards chagrin.

Their daughter returns home a little more confident, a little more quiet and a little more independent.

When she was a baby Renesmee had shared her every thought with her touch. This had only decreased slightly as she grew; but now she keeps her hands largely to herself. Bella walks silently into her room as she sleeps and places one of those hands on her own cheek. Sharing her daughters dreams had long ago become a welcome substitute for sleep; her dreams always restful and calming.

Now there is a strange new ache in her daughter. The faces of Carmen and Eleazer appear over and over in her mind, caught constantly in moments of intimacy her daughter had accidentally intruded on. Kate and Garrett appear too; they are boisterous in their affections and unashamed of public display. Nessie watches them kiss in the snow, hunt together, and play fight with a fascination she has not known in observing her immediate family. In the evenings Eleazer tells her about his life before Carmen and she feels the echoes of his loneliness with her father's empathy. The shadows of his sins trouble her innocent mind. She dreams of Jake too, not with the confident love of months gone by, but with new insecurity, new awareness of her own youth.

Bella does not trespass on her daughters dreams again. She knows instinctively that it is an intrusion she would not welcome.

She remains in Forks for only a fortnight before she announces she wants to visit Zafrina. In that time she spends more hours in her grandfather's study than ever before and pays a rather flabbergasted Jasper far more attention than usual.

Jake is thrown by her new aloofness and complains loudly of it to Rosalie in the garage. When she declares her intent to go to South America he insists on escorting her and Bella watches them interact with sharp eyes at the airport. They walk on changing ground. While in him there is a familiar protectiveness, his words are more considered, his touches careful and infrequent and his eyes hungry. The colour that stains her cheeks when he takes her hand and her insistence upon carrying her own luggage are new as well.

Jake returns quietly three days later, works like a slave on a tractor engine and runs to Seattle and back every morning. Edward avoids his company like the plague.

From South America she sends her family long but infrequent emails. Rosalie curses the lack of cell reception in the Amazon and Emmett begins to threaten to go down there and erect a cell phone tower for her if Renesmee does not return soon. Bella and Edward visit after two months when she shows no sign of wanting to come home.

They find their daughter wearing animal skin, moving through trees as though she were born of them and hunting panther with the Amazons. Bella catches glimpses of Zafrina's life when they hug; evidence of Zafrina's unique form of tutelage. She worries at the admiration in her daughter's eyes that does not falter even at evidence of her mentor's human diet. When they get back to Forks they send Alice and Jasper to monitor her under the guise of another visit.

Four months later she flies directly from South America to Nigeria to meet Rosalie and Emmett; who text them a picture of their now almost bald daughter from the airport. It's a silly thing, her hair will grow back, but Bella wishes she could cry.

It's a strange thing to receive news of your nine year old volunteering at a refugee camp, or to receive a call from her asking for money for medical supplies from Tunisia, or to be shown a photo that she had proudly sent to her grandfather of her putting up a drip on a dehydrated child. The whole family visits twice in the year she remains in central Africa. There are times Bella looks at her daughter but doesn't recognise her. Jake refuses to come with on their second visit. Renesmee tells them that she and Jake email when Edward asks, but Bella senses her resistance on the topic. She has a new strength and adventurousness about her and Jake has migrated to the back of her mind.

When finally back at home she fishes with Charlie, volunteers at the hospital in Seattle with Carlisle, calls Eleazer weekly for book recommendations and flatly refuses to allow Alice to dress her in skirts; preferring to play-fight with Emmett and Jazz and work in the garage with Rosalie in her well-worn Khaki's. She visits Jake's new repair shop every so often, coming home quiet and tense and always calling ahead to ask her mother to shield her thoughts from her father. The third time this happens Edward asks her flat out to stop shielding their daughter and they get into their largest fight since she insisted on paying for Jake to fly to South America.

She's home for six months before she leaves again, having applied to Cambridge University without bothering to tell anyone else about it. She sees a glimpse of her eleven year old when Edward decides she should rather go to a more local university and they have an enormous blow up. The cottage doors are slammed so hard they splinter off their hinges and Nessie is so loud that Esme calls to ask if everything is alright. In the end his wife and father talk him around, but Edward is none too pleased with the idea of his daughter gallivanting around on the other side of the world with an enormous population of young men in ready supply.

His fears are conformed six months later when Rosalie accidentally thinks of his daughter's boyfriend in front of him. Bella has to physically restrain him from throttling his sister for not telling them about the boy. They fly into Heathrow a week later at Edward's insistence and Bella barely holds back gales of laughter when the terrified boy meets her husband. He has been introduced as Renesmee's older brother but looks more like a psychopathic mass murderer in Andrew's presence. When they have a minute alone Edward tells her that they're not sleeping together but seem to be thinking about it. Bella is momentarily overwhelmed by panic at the thought of her twelve year old becoming sexually active. She contains this panic by cornering her daughter into a sex talk that night. Then she calls Alice in a near hysterical state in a phone booth at least two miles from where her husband is channel hopping moodily in their hotel room.

When it is finally a decent hour in the States she calls Jake and tells him that she is going to sponsor his university education and that he better get his arse on a plane as fast as his supernatural legs can carry him or she will break every bone in his body. He tries to object and she tells him that she has already donated the money for a new chemistry laboratory to get him in. He claims he isn't made for college and she insists she doesn't care if he fails every course he takes. He complains about his garage and she tells him Rose will double his business before he graduates. He finally tries to use Billy as an excuse and she gives in and tells him that Renesmee is about to lose her virginity to the 22 year old son of an English aristocrat. Then he says he's on his way to the airport.

When she gets back to the hotel she takes the further precaution of shielding both Renesmee and Andrew lest a hormone fuelled fantasy should turn into a bloodbath.

Edward meets Jake at Heathrow wearing a healthy scowl. She hears the bones in Jake's hand crunch when they greet each other but he doesn't so much as flinch. Her husband stares her friend down and then begins a very fatherly speech that she would have found amusing had anyone else been saying it.

"My daughter is twelve years old. You will go to school with her. You will make sure she does not take drugs or consume large amounts of alcohol. You will break the legs of any male who tries to touch her. You will not date her, kiss her, dance inappropriately with her, touch her or even hold her hand until she is at least eighteen. And I promise you Jacob, if any man even thinks about sleeping with her before marriage ever again, I will personally divest them of an essential male organ before they can draw another breath. Do I make myself clear?" Jake rolls his eyes.

"Hello to you too!" He says, then walks past her husband without a backward glance.

Three days later Bella hears her on the phone to Rose in tears. Apparently her boyfriend is avoiding her and refusing to take her calls. Perhaps she should feel guilty. She does not. Instead she buys Jake a Ducati and tells him she'll do all his biology homework if he continues as he has started.

So maybe she's a hypocrite. Maybe she started all this growing up stuff in the first place. Maybe she was already throwing herself at Edward at age sixteen. But whoever said that mothering was a rational practice?


End file.
